On the lightlike Lorentz violation

TL;DR

This paper explores the implications of lightlike spontaneous Lorentz invariance violation in gauge theories, showing how it leads to unobservable SLIV unless gauge invariance is broken, and discusses potential Lorentz-violating processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel lightlike SLIV constraint and analyzes its physical consequences, including vacuum degeneracy and mechanisms to break gauge invariance.

Findings

Lightlike SLIV results in degenerate vacua including the symmetric one.

Introducing an extra gauge field can lift vacuum degeneracy.

Partial gauge invariance breaking leads to observable Lorentz violation.

Abstract

We consider the lightlike spontaneous Lorentz invariance violation (SLIV) appearing through the zero "length-fixing" constraint put on a gauge vector field, $A_{\mu }A^{\mu }=0$, and discuss its physical consequences in the framework of a conventional QED and beyond. Again, as in the timelike and spacelike SLIV cases, $A_{\mu }A^{\mu }=\pm M_{A}^{2}$ ($M_{A}$ is a scale of SLIV), while this constraint leads to an emergence of the Nambu-Goldstone modes collected in physical photon, the SLIV itself is still left unobservable unless gauge invariance in the theory is broken. At the same time, a crucial difference with the two former cases is that the asymmetrical vacuum corresponding to the lightlike Lorentz violation appears infinitely degenerated with all other vacua including the symmetrical one. We show that this degeneracy can be lifted out by introducing an extra gauge vector field being sterile with respect to an ordinary matter, though having some potential couplings with the basic $A_{\mu }$ field. A slight mixing of them makes the underlying gauge invariance to be partially broken due to which physical Lorentz invariance occurs broken as well. This may cause a variety of the Lorentz violating processes some of which are briefly discussed.